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A SERMON 



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By JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D D 



L. 8. Harrison, £oo7c ^ Job (Printer 



80 & 82 DUANE STREET. 



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?a JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D. D 



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80 & 82 DUANE STREET. 
1863. 



SERMON, 



Text. — " Let the saints be joyful iu glory : let them sing aloud upon their 
beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged 
sword in their hand ; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and 
punishments upon the people." — Ps. 149 : 5-8. 



Undisturbed repose, joyful confidence, devout gratitude, 
manly courage, unflinching resolve, should characterise 
the people of God, amid those great commotions that make 
bare His arm and vindicate His righteousness. The 
psalm is assigned to the time of Nehemiah, when the 
Jews, restored from captivity, rebuilt their capital in face 
of the enemy, working sword in band, and singing halle- 
lujahs. The contrast of this reviving of national life and 
spirit with their previous despondency, runs by suggestion 
through every strophe of the psalm. Let those who had 
hung their harp upon the willows, now " sing unto the 
Lord a new song ;" let the children of Zion, who wept 
when they remembered her beside the rivers of Babylon, 
again " be joyful in their king ;" let those who gave their 
nights to lamentations, " now sing aloud upon their beds.' 



For two generations they had been cowed by a haughty, 
insolent foe ; now, their nationality was restored, the 
martial spirit was revived, and victory was assured by 
their cause and by the promise of God. " They built the 
wall, every man with a weapon in his hand," and with 
sentinels and trumpeters posted to give the alarm of 
an invasion. "When Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the 
Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites, heard 
that the walls of Jerusalem were going up, and that the 
breaches began to be stopped, then they were very wroth, 
and conspired all of them together to come and to tight 
against Jerusalem, and to hinder it : Nevertheless, we 
made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against 
them day and night. And Nehemiah said to the nobles, 
and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, 'Be not ye 
afraid of them ; remember the Lord which is great and 
terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your 
daughters, your wives, and your houses.' And the builders, 
ever} 7 one had his sword girded by his side, and sobuilded." 
"When the wall was finished, a day of thanksgiving was 
observed by a grand military procession, the priests and 
Levites leading, singers and trumpeters 1 leading each 
column, and all the people marshaled in the ranks, " with 
the high praises of God in their mouth, and a two-edged 
sword in their hand." 

The animus of the psalm is this blending of the martial 
spirit with the spirit of devotion ; the saints trusting, 
hoping, rejoicing in God, while arrayed for the conflict 
with his enemies ; the saints girding themselves for battle, 
with the praises of God upon their lips — ready to sing or 



to fight under the inspiration of His cause, under the lead 
of His providence. As Dr. Watts has paraphrased it — 

Then His high praise shall fill their tongons, 
Their hands shall wield the sword ; 
And vengeance shall attend their songs— 
The vengeance of the Lord. 

The very fervor and intensity of their religious devotion 
tires their hearts and nerves their hands for the defense of 
what God has given them in trust for his kingdom and 
for mankind. They sing a hallelujah war song, and keep 
Thanksgiving under arms. 

By a day of thanksgiving in this time of war, we are 
not simply honoring a usage of the days of peace, nor 
keeping up the remembrance of departed blessings ; nor 
are we driven to seek such grounds of thanksgiving as 
remain, notwithstanding the war — an abundant harvest, 
public health, domestic security, and the general comfort 
and order of societv. If we were at war with some foreign 
power upon a question of comity or of commerce, a war 
involving no vital principle, and evoking no moral senti- 
ment, having no justifying motive or worthy aim, a war 
which was neither a virtue nor a necessity, a war brought 
on by the ambition or the folty of rulers, or the jealousies 
and passions of races ; — if we were in a war which we were 
compelled to regard as needless, wasteful and even wicked ; 
then, while deploring the war itself as only an evil and a 
calamity, we might well seek occasion for thanksgiving in 
such mercies as would remain to mitigate the judgment. 
But we are not called to-dav to seek some offset to 



6 

calamity as matter for gratitude ; to eke out thanksgivings 
by such remnants of blessings as the war has spared to us ; 
to limit our praises to such material as compensations and 
contrasts could furnish ; to consider that even in a state of 
war, and in spite of it, we have enough of good left us to 
turn the scale for a day of thanksgiving rather than a day 
of fasting; no, while we have to-day in our personal. 
social and public condition, in respect to homes, health, 
comfort, plenty, outward material good, as much upon the 
whole to be thankful for as ever in the palmiest days of 
peace — we have, also, in and through the war itself, grounds 
of thanksgiving higher than peace has ever furnished. 
Never, since the establishing of our national independence, 
had the people of God in this nation such cause of devout 
exultation, of calm assurance, of lofty hope, of heroic trust, 
as in these days through which we are passing. It is a 
time for the saints to " look up and lift up their heads, 
knowing that the kingdom. of God is nigh at hand." It is 
a day for the Hallelujah Psalm. " Let the children of 
Zion be joyful in their king. For the Lord taketh pleas- . 
ure in his people : he will beautify the meek with salva- 
tion. Let the saints be joyful in glory : let them sing 
aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in 
their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand." 

I. — Note first, as matter of thanksgiving, the grand and 
commanding exhibition this war is making of the direct 
action of God's providential government upon human 
affairs. The people of God are identified in thought, feel- 
ing, desire, interest, expectation, with the Kingdom of 



God, its manifestation in power, its recognition among men, 
its consummation in glory ; they believe in that kingdom ; 
they accept it as a reality; they approve its principles; 
they own its authority ; they rejoice in its supremacy. To 
that kingdom they give their homage, their substance, 
their endeavors, praying continually, " Thy kingdom 
come, Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."' 
The true child of God can have no interest apart from 
this ; no desire that does not spring from and center in the 
kingdom and the glory of God. Now, this kingdom, while 
in its essence and life it is inner and spiritual — the alle- 
giance of the inmost heart to the throne of an invisible 
Sovereign — is furthered and developed by outward 
methods of Providence ; and the devout mind believes that 
in, through, or over all events, God is guiding, working, 
controlling, for his kingdom of truth and holiness. To 
such a mind nothing is more painful than the general dis- 
regard of God in the thoughts and doings of men. " The 
wicked through the pride of his countenance will not seek 
after God. God is not in all his thoughts : Thy judgments 
are far above out of his sight.'' His god is a cloud divin- 
ity, a metaphysical abstraction, a mechanical law, that has 
no living personal concern in the affairs of men. There- 
fore, as he goes on in his deceit and fraud, his mischief and 
vanity, his injustice and oppression, he chuckles over his 
success, saying, "God hath forgotten ; He hideth his face ; 
He will never see it." This profane, reckless disregard of 
God, this abounding, insolent atheism, the devout heart 
mourns over as for wounds inflicted upon a father. "Rivers 
of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not Thy 
law" 



8 

And this pain and grief at man's disregard of God are 
aggravated by God's seeming disregard of human wicked- 
ness ; by the absence of striking, convincing marks of God's 
sovereignity. "Why standest thou afar off, O Lord, why 
hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? My tears have been 
my meat day and night, while they continually say unto 
me, Where is thy God ?" When, therefore, after a long in- 
terval of atheistic folly and wickedness, when men have 
grown bold in sin, and the name and government of God 
have either fallen into derision or have passed out of mind, 
there comes of a sudden some turn in human affairs that 
startles men with the conviction that there is a Higher 
Power, seeing, ruling, judging — and there passes over the 
gay, the giddy, the godless, an awe of this invisible Pres- 
ence — then the saints who in secret places have been mourn- 
ing and sighing for the obscured and disregarded kingdom, 
sino- aloud in their beds and praise God in the congrega- 
tion. 

Now, never in all history, has there been a more marked 
and impressive manifestation of a divine Providence in 
human affairs, than in the origin and the events of this war. 
I need not argue this ; hardly need I instance it. For this 
is the one phenomenon that overtops all others in the 
history of the past two years, and that has come to be so 
dominant in everything that we are watching for it at 
every turn. From the day when the bombardment of 
Sumter roused the North as one man, to the day when 
the divisions of the North at the polls aroused the Govern 
ment and the Army to new life and vigor ; from the day 
when the slaveholders planned secession and rebellion to 



9 

[deserve their darling institution, to the day when that re- 
bellion called forth the proclamation giving freedom to all 
slaves throughout its area; from the day when the Trent 
aroused Great Britain to a frenzy of retaliation, to the day 
when the Monitor cooled her below even the line of medi- 
ation ; through all the successive acts, the gains and losses, 
the victories and reverses of this strange drama of tire and 
blood, we have felt, at every rising of the curtain, the aw- 
ful Presence that we could not see nor hear, could not 
measure nor shun. " Gentlemen," said a political orator, 
whose party life had been identified with Southern in- 
terests, "you know I never cared a for the negro, and 

/ don't care for him now ; but, it is pretty evident that 
Providence does ; and if we wish to win, we must get on 
the side of Providence." Thus, even the irreligious and 
profane do homage to that divine assurance : " For the op- 
pression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now 
will I arise saith the Lord. T will set him in safety from 
him that puffeth at him.' 1 

The providence of God in our affairs has* been as marked 
in our disasters as in our successes, in our defeats as in 
our deliverances, in the dilatoriness of Government as in 
its decision, in the mystifying inaction of our Generals as 
in their most brilliant achievements. If the testimony of 
returned prisoners and of our enemies is to be credited, not 
a battle have we lost that we might not have won ; not a 
movement has failed that might not have succeeded — if 
certain facts had been known, if certain steps had been 
taken. But, then, we should have swollen with pride, have 
o-loried in our wisdom and our strength, have boasted the 



10 

power of our institutions, the energy of our race, the supe- 
riority of our Government ; we should have made idols of 
our Rulers and Generals, and have gone on headlong in the 
career of material greatness, regardless of justice and of 
the cries of the oppressed. But the Lord meant it not so ; 
and, therefore, neither the plans of political conventions 
nor of peace congresses were able to avert the war ; nor was 
the wisdom of rulers, the strategy of generals, the valor of 
soldiers able to ensure victory. The Prince de Joinville, 
with the sagacity of a true soldier, has discerned our weak- 
nesses, and, with the fidelity of a true friend, has pointed 
out our mistakes. At the outset, he says, " the North felt 
itself the stronger, and saw no reason for troubling itself 
prematurely. Moreover, in the last resort, the North 
counted on the several hundred thousand Volunteers set 
down in the almanacs as representing the military force of 
the country, and supposed by the popular mind to be ir- 
resistible. But after Bull Run there was no room left for 
illusion. Ilumilation had opened all men's eyes. With 
the superiorit}* t of population and wealth, the right and 
legality of the question on their side, the North was com- 
pelled to the pain of wounded self-love. A great war was 
before the country.'''' A mysterious Power was shaping 
movements and measures by His will ; and so politicians, 
rulers, generals, people, have been more and more con- 
founded, and the war has gone on enlarging its proportions, 
multiplying its perplexities; yet,, always giving clearer 
shape and prominence to its real issues, until all men feel 
the impotence of human wisdom to grasp it, of human 
power to control it, and the men of faith and prayer stand 



11 

still to see the salvation of God. Let God be exalted, 
though who will go down ; " let God be true, though every 
man a liar." 

This demonstration of a direct Providence in human 
affairs came just when the age and the country had most 
need of it ; when the nation was in clanger of that intoxi- 
cation of material empire that lured Rome to destruction — 
an intoxication that is fatal alike under all civilizations, 
ancient or modern. Pagan or Christian. It came when the 
positivism of Comte and the social laws of Buckle were 
asserting themselves as the true theory of society, and the 
philosophers of Nature and of Progress were relegating 
the Deity to some obscure unknown — to some forgotten 
Past. Like the plagues of Egypt to the haughty and 
stubborn king, like the confounding of tongues to the au- 
dacious builders of Babel, like the handwriting on the 
wall to the impious revelers at Shushan, has been this 
interposition of divine Power; baffling all calculation, 
defeating every hope, abasing all pride, crossing every 
plan, turning wisdom into foolishness, power into weak- 
ness, boasting into contempt, and making wickedness in 
its fury and hate do the work of righteous retribution 
against itself. Men speak no more of fate, of chance, of 
,; the logic of events", of proximate causes, of the laws of 
development, of manifest destiny : but, as in the Arab 
legend, when the vases of gold and amber are broken and 
their treasures spilled, and only the poor vessel of clay 
remains, ther find in this the name of God ! This is that 
deliverance and triumph of the children of faith that was 
foretold by Esaias, the Prophet : " And it shall be said in 



13 

that day, Lo ! this is our God ; we have waited for Him, 
and lie will save us : this is the Lord : we have waited for 
Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." 

II. — There is cause for thanksgiving in the ascendancy 
the war has given to moral and spiritual ideas over 
material interests. I use the terms moral and spiritual 
in no technical sense of philosophy or theology, but to 
describe that which pertains to man's higher nature in 
distinction from mere material interests, whether personal 
or public. With ns, as a nation, material interests had 
become so engrossing, that we were known throughout 
Christendom as worshippers of the Dollar. The grand 
scale of our physical geography, our mountains, coasts, 
lakes, rivers; the rapid increase of our population, and with 
this, of agriculture, manufactures, commerce and all in- 
dustrial arts ; the wealth of our mines, forests, streams ; the 
amplitude of our area on the one hand and of our resources 
on the other, had bewildered us with the idea that physi- 
cal development was national success. We worshipped 
the Census. We measured corn fields by the square mile 
and railroads by parallels of latitude. The genius of 
America bestrode a steam plough to furrow her path of 
eonquest to the Rocky Mountains. But a nation cannot 
live by bread alone. Materialization is in the end destruc- 
tive of progress. It is of the earth earthy. That which 
is born of the flesh is flesh ; dust to dust, ashes to ashes, 
earth to earth. The last discovery at Pompeii is a touch- 
ing comment upon this inevitable law. In an extreme 
corner of the inner room of a house, as if they had crouched 
there for protection from the storm of hot ashes without, 



13 

lay the skeletons of five persons — one apparently a mother, 
with her infant at her side. There were armlets or brace- 
lets around these fleshless bones, and near by lay what 
were evidently the remains of a purse, its contents still to 
to be counted in a little heap of silver Roman coins. 80 
perished that most luxurious, sensuous, civilization ; its 
life, its wealth, its adornments,- mingled in one common 

dust, and nothing left to witness for its identity but the 

p 
skeleton/ impressions of its decay. 

A little before the catastrophe at Pompeii, Paul landed 
at the quay of Puteoli, and passed, almost unnoticed, 
despised Jewish prisoner oft his way to a felon's prison 
and a felon's death at Pome. But the moral ideas that 
Paul promulgated from his very prison against the vices 
and crimes of that sensual and atheistic age, live as an 
ever-growing power in society, renovated and Christianized. 
When Count de Gasperin, twenty years ago, stood up in 
the French Chambers to urge the final abolition of slavery, 
he said : " Gentlemen, let us not lower this discussion ; 
you have talked of commerce, of navigation, of the pro- 
ducts of the colonies ; but, above all these material inter- 
ests, there is one greater question — the greatest that can 
be brought to our notice — a question of civilization and 
of liberty. Of all illusions the most sad and foolish is that 
which makes the future of a country and its development 
consist in material interests. I believe that the smallest, 
idea, the least particle of genuine principle, will have 
more influence upon the destinies and the progress of this 
country, than all the railroads you have voted during this 
session. I summon France to her true honor and glory ; 



14 

to raise herself to the sublime attitude of doing right ; to 
perform a great duty, to discharge a great debt, to repair 
a great crime; this, this is the essential honor and ad 
vancement of the nation." Who does not feel the truth 
and the force of such a plea ? Yes, we answer, whatever 
elevates a people in the moral and the spiritual, whatever 
sentiments of honor, whatever deeds of virtue mark their 
history — this is a mure vital growth, a more sura develop- 
ment, than any increase of population, of territory, of ma- 
terial resources, of political dominion, of military strength. 
Victor Hugo, from quite another stand-point in moral phi- 
losophy, satirizing this steam'epoch, of " which a tea kettle 
contains the power," says with his inimitable antithesis : 
" This period will pass away, it is already passing away ; 
we are beginning to understand that, if there may be force 
in a boiler, there can be power only in a brain — that what 
leads and controls the world, is not locomotives, but ideas. 
Harness the locomotives to the ideas — that is well ; but do 
not take the horse for the horseman"; above all do not 
imitate the Orleans King of J 830, in "making of the pet- 
tiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas." 
See, now, how the war has heaved up into shape and 
view the great ideas that underlie our national life; even 
as the fires and earthquakes of the inner globe have 
heaved up the everlasting granite for its pillars. 

Government. — We hardly knew the word before the 
war. We had politicians, parties, administrations, but that 
impalpable entity called Government, that sublime moral 
idea that stands for order, for justice, for protection, for 



15 

the collective rights, liberties, welfare of the whole — how 
little have we realized of this ! Hitherto, the political ad- 
ministration at Washington has been regarded by one 
party as a tool to be used for its own aggrandizement, and 
by another as a rival to be overthrown at the next election. 
And so public policy has vibrated between the antagonisms 
of parties, and the State has been a mere convenience for 
the distribution of office and patronage. Xow, men feel 
that banks, ships, stocks, railroads, houses, merchandise, 
lands, are nothing without a Government that can rise 
above both the interest of party and the hostility of fac- 
tion, and maintain and enforce the laws in its own right 
From the seething chaos of rebellion the granite pillars of 
Government are emerging, to bear up society itself above 
the flood. 

Patriotism. — That intangible feeling that binds a man to 
his country as to a mother ; a something that we cannot 
analyze into mere attachment to the soil, the birth-place, 
the associations and institutions of our native land; that 
we cannot define by any set phrase of speech ; that we can- 
not inculcate by any formulas of philosophy ; that mys- 
terious chord that ties us tD a nation as to our other soul- 
how little of a living power has this sentiment been among 
us. We have had pride, vanity, boasting, self-conscious- 
ness, self-sufficiency enough — but little patriotism. 

For one, I have known what it was to be proud of the 
institutions of my country — its free ballot, free press, free 
trade, free churches, free schools ; its successful harmonizing 
of the independence of the individual with the solidarity 



16 

of right and privilege for the many — when I have com- 
pared its political and social state with that of other lands. 
I have known what it was to be proud of the flag of mv 
country, when I have seen it defy Austria in the harbor of 
Smyrna,* and command the respect of Turk and Arab on 
the Nile and in the Desert. But when, yesterday, a me- 
chanic humbly toiling for his daily bread, said to me, " I 
have sent my six sons to the war ; some of them have been 
in eleven battles, but thank God they're all safe; and if it 
is necessary, to save the country, I will give all my earn- 
ings and then go myself" — I felt another and a deeper chord 
vibrate for my country and her cause than was ever 
stirred by her pride or fame abroad. AVho does not feel 
himself the richer, manlier, nobler, for the touch of such n 
sentiment ? 

Liberty. — What a new birth, a new baptism, has liberty 
received in the nation that boasted freedom as its birth- 
right ! Yes, we have had liberty — in our school histories, 
in Fourth of July orations, in Buncombe speeches, a thing 
of constitutions and traditions; but, when the nation 
declared at the polls that its Constitution, its territory, its 
Government should not be used for the extension and sup- 
port of slavery, and, after the slave power defied the peo- 
ple's verdict by the sword, backed up its decision by a 
million men in arms, there was a realization of the sublime 
idea of liberty that even the Declaration of Independence 
fails to express. It is worth all it costs to feel that thrill 
of a great idea in this mammon-seeking age. These 

• The author happened to be at Smyrna during the excitement of the Kozsta 
case. 



17 



.rand, impalpable, spiritual entities-Government Patriot- 
L Liberty-are felt to be the true interests of society, 
worth more than treasure, more than business, more tban 
blood. 

Ill —We should be grateful that the war has so far per- 
fected the moral unity and fraternity of the Nation. In- 
deed, it might almost be said that the war has created us 
, Nation ; it ha* at least brought us to the conscousness 
of nationality. Before the war we were States, sections, 
races, native Americans, Irish. Germans, Protestants, 
( , l!ll0i ics, Jews, with many rival and jarnng interes s 
and some mark* tendencies toward social «^" 
But as the Crusades united the Christendom ot the Middle 
Ages-the Latin and Teutonic raees-in one spontaneous 
confederacy ; so that, as Mihnan notes, those who would 
otherwise •'have fallen in nearer and more intestine wars. 
wars waged for a less generous and unselfish end, tol- 
„etting European animosities and cmmt.cs o racn to- 
JL"- strewed the plains of Hungary and o. Asia Minor 
with their bones, and for above a century watered the 
.oil of Palestine with their blood ;"-as those religious 
wars which drank up the best blood of two continents and 
reatencd to exhaust the very life of Christendom, never- 
theless renovated Europe and created a new social orde,, 
wXring up petty fiefs, petty domains and petty proprie- 
tors l-ing rise to great civic communities, drawing peoples 
2L in nmtnal approximation, lifting society on of 
f narrow shackles into broader and freer paths ; so that, 



18 

as Guizot has noted, wars that were undertaken for the 
conquest of the infidel Turk, " began that transformation 
of the various elements of European society into govern- 
ments and nations, which is the characteristic of modern 
civilization" — even so this war of ours, begun for the sub- 
jugation of a sectional rebellion and the restoration of a 
political Union, has so mixed and fused together all sec- 
tions, interests, races, men, that henceforth there will be 
upon this soil a Nation in a sense before unknown, throb- 
bing with one conscious life, which absorbing into itself 
the juices of all stocks, native or transplanted, shall show 
a manhood, a vigor, a puissance, a breadth, a culture, a 
cosmopolitan humanity, and vet a concentrated unity, such 
as Home conld never reach, by conquering and absorbing 
all nations into her empire. In conquering the spirit of 
disunion, we conquer unity for ourselves. 

IV. — We may well give thanks t<> God for the marvel- 
lous development of Immune and generous sentiments by 
the war. Marvellous, indeed ! when towns, villages, 
neighborhoods ; financial corporations and charitable socie- 
ties; churches, schools, and families; the affluent and the 
humble ; young men and maidens, old men and children, 
vie with each other in multiplying the comforts and re- 
lieving the sufferings of the soldier and increasing the 
resources of the war. The whole country is turned, as it 
were, into a hospital, and the whole nation are its servitors. 
Such a training is of immense moment to the morale of 
a nation. Hitherto our national character has been a 
curious compound of shrewdness and extravagance, of the 



! ,i 



economist and the spendthrift. We have been grasping 
with one hand, while we have been lavish with the other. 
But profuseness of expenditure is not generosity of heart. 
The war is teaching ns to economize upon ourselves, that 
we may be generous to others ; to give play to our finer 
sympathies, where we had indulged only our pleasures or 
our tastes; to be self-denying to-day that we mav be un- 
selfish to-morrow; to be a people of heart as well as ot 
nerve; to abandon our isolated egoism for the service ot 

humanity. , 

What generous and heroic sentiments, too, are abroad 
;„ the air, caught by our young men, breathed at the fire- 
side, made to palpitate over all the land, when the fars hush 
upon some hotly contested field enables us to catch the 
courage and devotion of the dying, or the faith and pa- 
tience of the wounded. If the Crusades constituted the 
heroic age of Christianity," which with all its violence 
and rudeness, exhibited "the grandeur, the valor .daring, 
endurance, self-sacrifice, wonderful achievement ot the 
Homeric age, intensified by religious faith and fervor 
much morel this the heroic age of Liberty, when men „ 
every period and condition of life come by the thousand 
to that altar of freedom where Hampden and Sidney, 
Warren and Otis are inscribed as martyrs, and demand to 
be baptized for the dead. We are astonished at the moral 
acuity of our common people, who under this heroic in- 
J Jon have given their lives for the country, we are 
aLnished at the manly virtue of our own sons, who grow 
Ltb heroes in a day ; like that beardless boy, who, before 
g oin. into battle, said to his older comrade, I want to 



20 

light for the flag, and I mean to be brave ; but I can't tell 
what I may do under fire. If you see me falter, cheer me 
on. If I hold back, speak my mother's name ; and if after 
that I play the coward, shoot me on the spot.' 1 His brave 
soul would rather face death than that his weak nerves 
should dishonor the flag. Ah, this is that which was 
spoken by the Prophet Joel : " Your sons and your 
daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see 
visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.' , Once 
more the great and notable day of the Lord has come. 

V. — But our highest ground of rejoicing in the war is 
its vindication of the moral government of God in His 
judgment upon slavery, and its furtherance of justice and 
liberty in the land. That the annihilation of slavery as a 
power, as a system, and, we trust, also as a fact, will be the 
substantial result of the war, is the accumulating evidence 
of every day. The Prince de Joinville has divined 
our whole struggle, when he says, that " the North 
have the sacred trust of the Constitution to defend against 
a factious minority, which only took up arms to defend 
slavery ;" that the South is " a military despotism sustained 
by an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders ;" 
that the defeat of the North, or peace on Southern terms, 
" would be the conspicuous triumph of slavery, when the 
glorification and extension of slavery would be the com- 
mon watchword." And what this sagacious and impartial 
observer is so quick to perceive, even the slowest and most 
obstinate among ourselves are beginning to discover. 
Every blow struck in battle tells against slavery ; every 



21 

movement and measure, for what end soever designed, 
tends toward the overthrow of slavery ; so that the popu- 
lar instinct of the North, and the spontaneous fears of the 
South, agree in representing slavery as already doomed ; 
doomed by visitation of God; doomed in such a way, that 
it stands condemned and smitten by the Almighty in the 
sight of all nations. His truth and righteousness are all 
the more signally vindicated after this long delay, and by 
this culmination of treachery and treason against human- 
ity, in a self-destroying war. Is there a saint in all the land, 
is there one that aspires to fellowship with angels, who 
will not join in hallelujahs when that great Babylon of 
iniquity is fallen ? There is no such saint in Heaven. 
Wherefore, in the near advent of the day when this na- 
tion shall no longer recognize a slave, " Let the saints be 
joyful in their beds," preventing the dawn with their hal- 
lelujahs. " Let the high praises of God be in their 
mouth." 

But the very gratitude for which the war gives such oc- 
casion, summons us to continued valor in defense of what 
we have received in trust from God. It is His honor that 
we are commissioned to vindicate, not our own ; it is His 
vengeance we are commissioned to inflict, not our own ; 
therefore, the justice of our cause alone should inspire us ; 
and, therefore, we should keep it just. We have no right 
to wage this w r ar for mere territorial conquest. If this 
were a question about the boundary line of Maine or of 
Oregon, it were foolish, it were wicked, to waste blood 
upon it. We are not warring for sectional pride and 
power. If this were a mere test of the relative strength 



and prerogatives of Korth or South, East or West, it were an 
unpardonable waste of life. We are not warring merely 
tor a political Union upon a given area. If there is no 
broader, deeper question, than the numerical size and the 
superficial extent of a Commonwealth of States, the sac- 
rifice is far too great. 

But there is a deeper, a more vital question. Our Con- 
stitution, our territory, our Union, derive their value from 
their relation to ideas and principles committed to us in 
trust for mankind. The life of. this nation, as " a political 
person," embodying within itself the idea of regulated 
liberty ; the sacred legacy of Constitutional freedom, be- 
queathed by the martyrs of English liberty and by our 
Revolutionary sires ; the garnered hopes and yearnings of 
the nations for a higher and purer social life ; the grand 
prophesy of a just and equal commonwealth of all peoples 
and races, upon this soil — these are the things we are 
asked to defend by the sword, Avhile giving thanks to God 
for this high and sacred mission. And these are questions 
that cannot admit of arbitration or compromise. Ques- 
tions of boundary, of comity, of political division, of in- 
ternational law, may be submitted to arbitration. But 
you cannot have an arbitration upon the life of a nation — 
inquest is the word ; for when such a measure comes, its 
life is already gone. You can compromise a question of 
territory ; you cannot compromise the question whether 
the nation shall keep its integral life. That life goes with 
the compromise. You may divide States and territories. 
You cannot divide the heart and life of the nation. But 
the life of this nation is so bound up in its territorial unity. 



23 

its political union, its organic laws, its indefeasible Consti- 
tution, that the only division possible is " the distribution of 
the butcher, who kills what he divides." We must live 
as one people — a free, a growing, a glorious, a perpetual 
life, or we must die, utterly, miserably, hopelessly. 

You are at liberty to give up all your debts in the South, 
to purchase peace at her hands. You cannot give up one 
of the rights of your children under this Government, for 
these are not yours to give. Nay, these are yours in trust 
to be maintained ; and God will require it at your hand. 
You may barter away your own privileges, if you are base 
enough for that ! You may go down upon your knees to 
the slave oligarchy and promise to vote only for such can- 
didates as they shall nominate, or to accept such as they 
shall impose. But you cannot barter away my liberties 
chartered by the Constitution ; you cannot barter the 
liberties of mankind pledged in our Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and our national history ; you cannot barter the 
heritage of ages gone, the hope of ages yet to come ; you 
cannot crush the budding of liberty in the hearts of four 
millions of men made free by the act of God. Should 
you barter these for peace, the treacherous coin would 
bring curses upon your house, upon your head ; it would 
burn through flesh and bone to your marrow ; it would eat 
out your vitals ; and if to get rid of its plagues, you should 
go out and hang yourself, they would return to disquiet 
your grave. 

God has drawn the sword and placed it in our hands 
for the defense of Eight, of Freedom, of Law. We must 
not, we dare not, hold it back. By all the worth of the 



24 

blessings He has given us in this favored land ; by the 
value of that freedom which was baptized for us in the 
blood of our sires ; by all the martyrs of the English race, 
who in the good old cause of liberty have suffered and 
died; by all the prayers and vows registered on high for 
the triumph of Christ's kingdom here; by all the cries of 
the oppressed, that have entered into the ear of the Lord 
of Sabaoth; by all the rights, the hopes, the duties, the 
powers, given to free Christian men, that they may be co 
workers with God in the august triumphs of His truth — 
we must defend the right: we must stand by the ark of 
liberty. 

"We go forth, now, under a new inspiration. The Proc- 
lamation of Emancipation has challenged all the powers 
of darkness to defeat it. Unclean spirits, like frogs, seem 
to swarm out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the 
mouth of the beast and of the false prophet. But we 
cannot be dismayed. We will still march on with the 
psalter on our tongue and the sword in our hand ; for soon 
the seventh angel shall "pour out his vial into the air, 
and there shall come a great voice out of the temple of 
heaven, from the throne, saving, 

"IT IS DONE." 







. 



LIBRAE OF COHgSS 



B 012 028 250 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




012 028 250 5 



peRmalipe® 
pH 8.5 



